The Bat Man of Steel

I’m a pretty recent Batman convert; the character has always been on my radar, but I honestly didn’t care too much until the Dark Knight trilogy. I liked the Adam West series because it was intentionally campy—the pre-Christopher Nolan films with their unintentional camp, not so much.
If you’ve been following along for the past several months, you know I’m a big proponent of Man of Steel. I readily acknowledge its missteps, but I grew to love it more with each viewing.

With the SDCC announcement of a big-screen Superman/Batman team-up, I declared that the geek gods had smiled upon humanity.

And then came Thursday’s casting news.
If you’ve been living under a rock or otherwise ignoring the incessant internet chatter for the last 18 or so hours, I’ll give it to you straight: Ben Affleck is next to don the infamous cowl of The Bat Man.

Would it have been great if Christian Bale surprised us and reprised the role? I don’t know about “great,” but it would’ve been cool. Even Bale isn’t the be-all, end-all for the character.
Would I have chosen Affleck? Absolutely not. Karl Urban was my top pick, though I think Gerard Butler might have been a worthy contender as well.

But I also don’t think Affleck’s the worst possible choice, as many of my geeky peers assert. There are plenty of examples out there, but let’s stick with the franchise for our case study. The fandom essentially called for Heath Ledger’s crucifixion when he was cast as The Joker.
Either I’ve been oblivious to the outcry based on the actual performance, or a good many of us agree that he was superb.

The fact is that we have no way of judging how Affleck will be in this role until we’ve seen it. There’s been very little information leaked about the plot let alone how its screenplay will turn out. It could be a stinker, or he could be brilliant. We’ve got until July 2015 to speculate.

Frankly, Henry Cavill’s take on Clark/Supes is enough to for me to justify the price of admission. He’s not perfect either, but the sense of humility and introspection he brings to the character works for this fangirl.

I’m not sure there’s anything they could do at this point to hurt my enthusiasm for this film…save for plunking down a Jar-Jar or Kimye cameo (they’re basically the same, right?!) .

This relates to your comment on Heath Ledger: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/you-should-give-ben-affleck-a-shot-at-batman. A Kimye scenario would be nice if they fell off a bridge or something and neither Batman or Superman decided to save them. Think about it, they lose their grip and fall and both superheroes go, “Nah, not worth my time. World is better off without them.” And then walk/fly away. Muaha.